- Words Notion Staff
From high-altitude videos to virtual stages, Dolo Tonight makes experimentation feel inevitable, not forced.
The traditional path from college dropout to music success usually involves a sob story, some struggle bars, and a triumphant comeback narrative. But Jonah Rindner, the 27-year-old artist known as Dolo Tonight, took a different route entirely. Trading food science textbooks for studio sessions, the Watchung, New Jersey native has carved out a space in music that defies easy categorization, and that’s exactly how he likes it.
From Lab Coats to Label Deals
Picture this: A University of Maine student sits in a chemistry lab, supposed to be studying flavor compounds, but instead he’s writing verses in his notebook. That was Rindner in 2018, enrolled in food science with dreams of becoming a flavor chemist. The irony isn’t lost, he was literally studying how to create flavors while simultaneously cooking up his own musical recipe.
“I was spending more time writing songs than doing lab work,” Rindner would later admit. It’s a familiar story in hip-hop, but what happened next wasn’t. Instead of dropping out in defiance, he got his parents’ blessing and even a professor’s support to chase music full-time. No dramatic family confrontation, no burning bridges, just a calculated pivot that would define his approach to everything that followed.
The breakthrough came through pure hustle and timing. In a New York restaurant, Rindner spotted Grammy-winning engineer Michael Ashby, known for his work with Cardi B. Rather than wait for the perfect moment, he walked up and introduced himself. That bold move led to mentorship and studio time that would shape the Dolo Tonight sound.
Breaking Through Without Breaking Convention
When ‘Too High’ dropped in 2019, it didn’t sound like anything else bubbling in the underground. The track, mixed by Ashby, blended melodic hip-hop with an energy that felt both nostalgic and futuristic. It landed Rindner in Spotify’s Top 100 Breaking Artists of 2019, even more impressive for an independent artist with no machine behind him.
But here’s where Dolo Tonight diverged from the playbook. Instead of chasing that sound, trying to recreate ‘Too High’ ad nauseam, he went left. Singles like ‘Blue’ and ‘Pink Lemonade’ showed range, incorporating elements that had no business working together. Rindner combined jazz drums from his childhood, punk energy from his teenage years, and the melodic sensibilities of Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap, the album that first made him fall in love with hip-hop.
The pandemic could have derailed everything. For most emerging artists, losing touring opportunities meant losing momentum. Dolo Tonight adapted. His 2020 single ‘Zoom’ accidentally benefited from the word’s sudden ubiquity during quarantine, but the track itself was no gimmick. It showcased what would become his signature move: taking something familiar and twisting it just enough to make you question what you’re hearing.
The Anti-Pop Manifesto
By 2021, when his debut EP Back to Earth dropped via Asylum Records and Warner Music’s machine blessing, Dolo Tonight had started to find his thesis: awkward-pop. It’s a term that sounds like marketing speak until you actually listen to the music. “Awkward-pop is all about messing around with structure and sounds,” he explained. “We’d ask, ‘What would someone normally do?’ and then do the exact opposite.”
This wasn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Working with his collective Baggage Claim (a name that perfectly captures their approach to emotional honesty in music,) Dolo crafted songs that used pop’s accessibility as a trojan horse for something weirder, more substantial.
The evolution became crystal clear with 2022’s Life’s A Party Then You’re Dead EP and a slew of singles following on Epitaph Records. Yes, Epitaph, the punk label that gave us The Offspring and Bad Religion. For an artist who started in melodic hip-hop, signing to a punk institution might seem random. But it made perfect sense for someone who grew up on both jazz and hardcore, who saw genre as suggestion rather than scripture.

Virtual Concerts and Hot Air Balloons
While his peers were fighting for playlist placement, Dolo Tonight was filming music videos in hot air balloons. For ‘Higher,’ he literally took his art to new heights, creating what’s reportedly the highest-altitude music video shot in the Western Hemisphere. It’s the kind of move that could read as a publicity stunt, except it perfectly matched the song’s ambition.
He brought that same innovative energy to distribution. In 2022, while others were trying to figure out NFTs, Dolo Tonight partnered with Roblox for a virtual concert experience. Complete with digital merch and interactive challenges, it wasn’t just adaptation to pandemic restrictions, it was a glimpse at how artists could meet fans in entirely new spaces.
The numbers back up the approach. Over 52 million TikTok views, 5 million YouTube views, all without compromising his “weird kid” aesthetic. He describes himself as “Bill Nye-meets-Cartoon Network-meets-a rapper,” and somehow that makes perfect sense when you see him in action.
Building Community in the Margins
Dolo Tonight’s collaborations read like a who’s who of artists who don’t fit neatly into boxes. His work with Roe Kapara, particularly on ‘Fake My Death,’ showcases two artists who understand that darkness and humor aren’t opposites, they’re dance partners. The track hit number 7 on iTunes’ Alternative chart, proving there’s an audience for this particular brand of existential fun.
Working with JUNO Award-winning producer Ryan Spraker pushed him even further. Spraker’s advice to “let go of genre and perfectionism” became a north star for Dolo’s creative process. The result is music that feels both meticulously crafted and spontaneously generated, professional but never precious.
The Blockbuster Ambition
Now, with his debut album DVD Rental Store set for October 3, 2025, Dolo Tonight and his wave if Awkward Pop is making their biggest statement yet. A concept album built around the metaphor of a video rental store, it’s nostalgia without the rose-colored glasses, coming-of-age without the clichés.
The album opens with a skit where Dolo picks out an unmarked disc at a video store, complete with a working phone number (908-224-4086). Tracks like ‘Varsity Lip’ and ‘Two Pens’ tackle classic teenage tropes through his singular lens. It’s ambitious, borderline pretentious, and exactly what you’d expect from someone who turned down chemistry for choruses.
The Neutral Zone
What makes Dolo Tonight compelling isn’t just his willingness to experiment, plenty of artists do that. It’s his ability to make the experimentation feel inevitable rather than forced. He’s not trying to be weird; he just is. He’s not rebelling against pop structure; he’s simply building something different with the same materials.
In an era where algorithms push artists toward safe, reproducible content, Dolo Tonight represents something increasingly rare: an artist who’s more interested in being interesting than being optimal. Whether that leads to mainstream success or cult status remains to be seen. But for an artist who describes his mission as bringing “fun back into music” while celebrating “wanderers, dreamers, and outcasts,” maybe that distinction doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.
The American music landscape has always rewarded innovation eventually, even if it doesn’t recognize it immediately. Dolo Tonight isn’t waiting for permission. He’s too busy in his anti-pop laboratory, cooking up flavors the industry doesn’t even have names for yet. And maybe that’s exactly where he belongs, not in any particular lane, but in the spaces between them, building something new from the wreckage of what came before.